


the bet

by mistyheartrbs



Category: Little Witch Academia
Genre: Awkward Dates, F/F, Flashbacks, Hurt/Comfort, Reminiscing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-11
Updated: 2017-10-11
Packaged: 2019-01-15 21:12:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12328986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mistyheartrbs/pseuds/mistyheartrbs
Summary: Chariot and Croix both think back to a night from years ago.Things spiral from there.





	the bet

**Author's Note:**

> when it rains it pours, you know. it's all or nothing when it comes to my update schedule and if you're still here in spite of that, i love you. 
> 
> anyway, i finished this fic last night. chariot and croix both need a hug. preferably from each other.

"You're _still_ studying?" Chariot quirked an eyebrow as she slid in place next to Croix, peeping over her shoulder. She smelled like paper. "Everyone's asleep right now, you know. Your team's gonna worry about you." 

"They won't." 

"But _Cro-oix,"_ Chariot whined, leaning in close so that she could see the glint off Croix's glasses. "The stars are so pretty tonight, I thought maybe we could . . . eh, forget it." 

"What?" Croix looked up for the first time that night. 

"If you're not going back to your dorm, I could show you this one routine I've been working on. I tried to put that one trick you taught me in there - with the little cubes? They might look cool if I-" Croix snapped the book shut. 

"I'll go." 

***

The wintry English air filled Chariot's lungs as she ran out into the frosty open field. She loved it - the way it seemed boundless, unending and free. Croix ran a few paces behind her, notebook clenched tightly in her hands until her knuckles turned bone-white. Chariot dug her heels into the ground once she reached the perfect place.

"Okay, so the ledge right there is the audience, got it?" she said, pointing to a row of rocks that was probably older than Luna Nova itself. Croix nodded, and she began. "And a one, and a two, and a one two three four!" Pointing her wand towards the sky, Chariot closed her eyes and focused until a few little stars started to float from it, streaking the sky after a few more seconds. Croix sat up a little straighter. "How's that?" 

"It's . . . erm . . ." Croix trailed off after a moment, her eyes wide as she rubbed her glasses with the sleeve of her robe. ". . . amazing?" 

"You think so?" Chariot could feel a funny little swelling in her chest, something akin to sunlight. She didn't pay it much heed. "I mean, it's not really that impressive, I still have to-" 

"It was good." Croix had that tone in her voice, the one that said she couldn't argue. It was fact, and it was indisputable, and it made Chariot feel like she could do anything. "Those audiences won't know what hit them." 

"Hah, well, I still have to practice a lot, and then there's the Claimh Solis, and . . . well, it's a long while off, isn't it?" 

"Maybe." Croix pressed a hand against the cold rock, tapping it rhythmically. Chariot sat down next to her. "I liked that one, though. You're going to do something amazing, right? You can't doubt yourself." 

"It's hard to do that." Chariot fiddled with her robes - they always felt too stuffy, like they were beginning to swallow her. 

"It shouldn't be." Croix leaned against her, nonchalant, but as soon as Chariot turned to face her she scooted away nervously and jammed her glasses back on. She always did that when she was embarrassed. "You're . . . kind of incredible." 

"Aw, you're just saying that." Chariot scratched the back of her neck, feeling her face heat up and her fingers go numb. She was hopeless. Both of them were, really, but they were young and feelings did not come particularly easily to either one of them. "You're the incredible one." 

"Nope. It's you." A cold breeze blew through the field, and Croix shivered. 

"Hey, would you want to, uh, would you want to come back to my room with me? It's probably warmer in there than it is out here, and my team's usually asleep by now." Croix turned beet-red, and then, slowly, she nodded. 

"I'd love that," she said, and so they went. 

***

True to her word, Chariot's roommates were fast asleep, but Croix crept into the dorm like a spy on an espionage mission anyway. 

"What now?" she whispered. Chariot shrugged. 

"I dunno," she whispered back. "I hadn't really thought that far forward." 

"We could just sit here." Still cautious, Croix sat down on the floor, wincing when it made a creaking noise. Chariot followed suit. "The rooms here are so old." 

"Oh? And how would you change them if you could, Ms. Meridies?" Chariot elbowed her playfully. 

"I'd let technology have a place at the school, for one. It's like they're still living in the fifteenth century." It was warmer in the dorm than it had been outside, but a draft still blew through. Croix leaned back until she was facing the ceiling. "We can't just let magic remain stagnant, can we? They'd never let you perform, otherwise." 

"Hmm, I guess." The dorm ceilings were low and old, but some of the wood looked newer than other parts, standing out like a gleaming beacon. Chariot suspected that was the result of someone crashing through during a failed broom practice. "It'd be nice if we could get a TV in here." 

"Right?" Croix became more animated as she talked. "We could watch movies right here in the school instead of having to go to town to see them, and we could spend hours just curled up together and . . ." The sentence tapered off, and Croix curled closer into herself. "It's not going to happen, is it." She phrased it more as a statement than a question - a fact, in her eyes. 

"Hey, weren't you the one to tell me that . . . uh . . . a believing heart is my magic?" Croix looked back up. 

"I guess I did." 

"Let's make a deal, then. If you bring technology to the school first, I'll buy you a really fancy dinner. We'll get dressed up and go out to town and I'll get you whatever you want." 

"And if you become a performer first?" 

"You'll have to buy _me_ dinner." Chariot smiled smugly, sticking out her hand, even as her sleeve drooped over it. Croix chuckled, pushing back the sleeve, and shook it. Her hand was warm - wonderfully warm, like electricity, a tingling that no spell could ever recreate. Chariot never wanted to let go, and it didn't seem like Croix did, either. 

"It's a deal." 

***

Chariot looked over the stacks of papers to grade without absorbing a single word. She supposed that it wouldn't mean much - after the near-disaster that had just occurred, nobody was really paying attention to classes as they normally were. There was too much to talk about, diplomatic conversations with the governors and regulations on magic use outside the school. Grades were the last thing on anyone's mind right now. 

It was because of this mess she found herself in that Chariot didn't hear the rap of knuckles against her door for several seconds, and indeed it wasn't even the knocking that got her attention - it was the corner of an oversized beige poncho poking under the door. 

"Come in," she called. Croix opened the door with a sort of hesitance that Chariot hadn't seen in a long time. The poncho covered most of her body, but Chariot could still see bandages crossing her legs and hands, pink with dried blood, giving her the appearance of a sort of twenty-first century mummy. 

"It seems like I owe you a dinner." 

"What?" 

"I'd forgotten about our bet until now." Croix crossed the room to Chariot's side, still standing far enough away that Chariot wished, silently, for her to come closer. "You became a performer before I brought technology here, and you were a damn good performer, too. I've only got about a day until I'm 'escorted from the premises,' but there's a nice little restaurant in town. If you're not bogged down by all of . . ." Croix gestured to the papers and inkless quills scattered around the desk. ". . . this, maybe you'd like to join me? I'd buy, of course. A deal is a deal." 

"Croix, I'm busy, and . . ." Chariot trailed off. She couldn't really fight it, not when memories of that night were coming back to her in droves, the cold air outside and the creak of the floorboards beneath her and _Croix._ ". . . I'd love to." Croix had never been good at hiding her surprise, and today seemed to be no exception as her eyes widened comically. 

"I'll, erm, meet you out by the leylines in ten minutes. They let me keep one of the vacuums, we can fly there on that." 

"It's a date." 

***

Fidgeting uncomfortably, tugging at the seams of her poncho and watching the stars begin to twinkle outside, Croix breathed a sigh of relief when Chariot came hurrying to the leyline gates. 

"Are you ready?" 

"I think so." Chariot took a deep breath, eyeing the vacuum suspiciously. 

"It won't try to kill you, if that's what you're worried about." 

"I wasn't." She'd always been a terrible liar. "It's just . . . erm . . . is that really big enough for two people?"

"I hope so." Croix delicately hopped on, leaning forward so as to give Chariot room. "You're still good at balancing, right?" 

"I hope so." 

"Let's get going, then." The two of them were sent hurtling through the green glow of the entrance, holding onto each other like it was second nature. 

"They're beautiful," Chariot breathed, and Croix felt her heart wedge itself somewhere in her throat. "I don't usually pay any attention to these, but look!" Croix followed her finger. "They're like glowing vines." 

"I guess they are pretty amazing." 

"I wonder if anyone's tried to live here. Just, floating around in the void forever." Chariot went quiet for a moment, and the only sounds Croix could hear were her soft breathing and the vacuum's mechanical whirs. "That'd be really lonely, wouldn't it?" 

"It looks like we're here!" Croix blurted out, unsure of exactly how to respond to something like that. The vacuum took a sharp dive downwards, and soon the two women were standing in the town square. 

"It's so lovely at night, don't you think so?" Streetlights twinkled above them, shops with grand window displays glowing like little pockets of sanctuary. Chariot talked like a novel when she felt like that, and Croix doubted she'd have ever gotten tired of it. 

"It is." 

"Where's the restaurant?" 

"Right that way." Almost as if no time had passed at all, Croix led her by the hand down the cobblestone road. The lights reflected off of Chariot's glasses so that Croix could hardly see her ruby eyes. "Hey, why're you still wearing those glasses? You had 20/20 vision back in high school." Croix stopped for a moment. "Nothing happened to your vision, right?" 

"Oh, no, it's fine! It's fine." Chariot shook her head. "No, no, my vision's fine." She took off the glasses for emphasis. "I just like them. My face feels too light when I take them off." Croix felt a breeze tickle the back of her neck. "We've both changed a lot, huh?" 

"Mrm-hmm." 

"Is this it?" Croix looked up, and sure enough, the restaurant stood in front of them, strings of lanterns connecting the umbrellas outside like wires. 

"It is." An elderly couple strolled by, nonchalant. "Let's sit outside. It's nice here." 

"Lead the way, Ms. Meridies." Chariot bowed dramatically, hardly hiding the smirk on her face. Croix wondered if the darkness of the sky would be enough to hide the pink in her cheeks. 

***

They were seated a few minutes later, on opposite sides of a round little table with an umbrella hanging over them as if it were a shield. Chariot couldn't see the stars. The ice cubes in her water jingled as she poked at them with a straw, and Croix kept fidgeting with her poncho. 

"What happened to us, Croix?" she murmured, gaze dropping to the pavement beneath her feet. 

"I don't know." It was the truth, at least. Chariot couldn't have asked for anything more than that. Her stomach suddenly flipped, as if trying to drag her away from the table, and bile rose in her throat. Croix was uncomfortable, she was uncomfortable, and honoring some bet they'd made twelve or so years ago felt painfully unimportant right around then. "I missed you," Croix added, like it was an afterthought. Chariot nodded dimly in agreement. 

"I kept wondering what you were doing." 

"You could've called me." 

"They don't have phones at Luna Nova." A crow flapped its wings somewhere nearby, and Chariot wondered for a split second if she'd remembered to feed Alcor. "Would you have picked up?" 

"Probably not." 

"Right." Silence hung over the both of them, and Chariot waved away the waitress when she asked if they knew what to order. She hadn't even opened the menu. 

"I thought about you, too. I picked up a lot of the showmanship from your old rehearsals." 

"I could tell." Chariot allowed a small smile to cross her face. "You certainly became more dramatic." 

"I tried." Croix drummed her nails on the table. "If we're being honest, I didn't even recognize you at first." 

"What, because of the hair and the glasses?" 

"Not just that." Croix leaned back a little. "I thought you'd died down, like something had just . . ." She snapped a straw in half for emphasis. "Would've made my cartoon supervillain plan easier, but I was wrong about that." It was starting to sound dangerously like a love confession, but Chariot's heart melted nonetheless. "You're . . . you're just as strong-willed and reckless and incredible as you were back then." 

"You, too." 

"I wish it didn't have to be like this." 

"Croix?" 

"I mean, we both messed up, right? Except, you made a nice little dent in the moon and I nearly _nuked a small country,_ and you're the one cleaning up the mess. It's not fair." 

"Croix, you don't have to . . ." A sudden gust of wind ruffled both women, lifting up Croix's poncho, and a bag with camping supplies and herbs and things Chariot didn't even recognize sticking out of it made itself known. "You're not staying, are you?" 

"I can't." Croix looked down, and in that moment Chariot thought that she looked so very small - not the evil destroyer that the media was already starting to paint her as, or even the mad scientist in a tower that the students whispered of their former teacher in the hallways. She was just a girl. 

"I can come with you." 

"It's something I have to do alone." 

"You don't have to be alone, Croix." Chariot stood up from the chair, letting it screech back without a second thought. Croix blinked. "Okay? You _never_ have to be alone." 

"You always see the _good_ in people, Chariot." Croix looked at her with the expression of a woman broken, doing a poor job of holding tears back, and Chariot just wanted to hold her in a hug and never let go. "Don't you think that sometimes it's just not there?" 

_To hell with this._

Chariot hugged her, holding her close, and Croix didn't make a move to stop her. They must've looked a sad sight to anyone passing by - two witchy women, bawling like one had been sent to war or diagnosed with cancer, or perhaps reunited at long last. 

"Write me, okay?" 

"I will." 

"Don't forget me." 

"I never could." 

They kept standing there for what might have been hours, fitting right into each other's embrace like they'd always been meant to be there. 

***

When she said goodbye to Chariot the next day, Croix wondered - as she already had, several times - if this was a good idea, but she steeled herself and promised that it was for the best. She'd come back a better person, that was what she'd decided, and then - if Chariot still wanted her - they'd live out the life that the two of them had always dreamed about when they were kids. 

It didn't make things hurt any less when she saw Chariot wave to her until the sunny Luna Nova campus had faded away into green vines, all floating and reaching out forever. 

***

When Croix left the following day, Chariot had already said her goodbyes - this was just a formality, really - but her heart ached nonetheless. She watched Croix's form disappear into the green light, and she smiled just before wiping away a tear. 

"I love you," she whispered, and she hoped that Croix would hear her.

**Author's Note:**

> i suppose this could be considered a prequel to "not a love letter" but it works as its own thing, too.


End file.
